Bio-assay: The best alternative for conventional methods in detection of epidermal growth factor

Growth factors are necessary for proper and efficient wound closure and tissue regeneration. Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is one of the key signaling molecules in stimulating epithelial cell motility, making it a required factor for re-epithelialization. Increased EGF expression is likely to be a strong prognostic and predictive feature in multiple tumor types and determination of EGF may product remarkable diagnosis benefits. Thus, identification and quantification of EGF in biomedical fields are particularly important. Affinity chromatography, immunohistochemical methods and ELISA, conventional methods for EGF detection, requiring high-cost and complicated instrumentation, take too much time and offer deficient sensitivity and selectivity, which restrict their usage in real applications. Hence, it is essential to design and build enhanced systems and platforms for the recognition and quantification of protein biomarkers. In the past few years, bio-assays have been received noticeable attention for the detection of EGF owing to their high sensitivity, selectivity, accuracy, fast response, and low cost. Since the role and importance of developing aptasensors in cancer diagnosis is undeniable. In this review, electrochemical biosensors, which have been applied by many researchers for EGF cancer biomarker detection, have been mentioned and merits and demerits of them have been explained and compared. Efforts related to design and development of aptamer-based biosensors using nanoparticles for sensitive and selective detection of EGF have been reviewed considering: Aptamer importance as recognition elements, principal, application and the recent improvements and developments of aptamer based optical and electrochemical methods. In addition, commercial biosensors and future perspectives for rapid and on-site detection of EGF have been summarized.